Modern China: An Interpretive Anthology PDF
Preview Modern China: An Interpretive Anthology
Modern China — / \ 'N r' U. S. S. R. (Turkestan) OUTER MONGOLIA THAILAND Modern China An Interpretive Anthology JOSEPH R. LEVENSON University of California, Berkeley THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Collier-Macmillan Limited London About the cover: Lo P’ing, "Portrait of the Artist's Friend, I-an” dated 1798 (Ching Yüan Chai Collection}. “The painting contains so many levels of meaning as to invite one to read still more into it. Admitting this w may still wonder, as we look at it, whether Lo P’ing was not conscious of standing near the end of a long evolution, contemplating the past with the same mild sadness as the figure he portrays. The painting sums up the special virtues of the last phases of the evolution, but also exemplifies the paradoxes and contradictions that had penetrated to the very heart of Chinese painting: awk wardness sublimated into a kind of skill, individuality manifested in archaism, straightforward feeling set forth through oblique allusions, serious points disguised as pleasantries. Every further degree of concern with such interplay of opposites, every additional layer of stylistic reference, had separated the artist that much more from the once-possible forthright approach to the world." James Cahill, Chinese Pointing (New York: Skira International, i960}, p. 192. © Copyright, The Estate of Joseph R. Levenson, 1971 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. First Printing Library of Congress catalog card number: 78-103692 The Macmillan Company Colubr-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., Toronto, Ontario PRINTED IN THB UNITED STATES OP AMERICA Foreword On April 6, 1969, Joseph R. Levenson was drowned in a boaring accident This untimely death of so brilliant a scholar stunned his colleagues and grieved his family and close friends. For all of us Levenson came closer to die ideal scholar in humaneness and intellect than anyone we have known. His influence upon our own thinking and work has been great. Indeed for a whole generation of students of Asian history he brought not only great sensitivity and understanding to an analysis of the China of the past and die revolutions of her mind, but ability to make his students conscious of the sensibility of the Chinese past and of the sorrow and brilliance of her decline. It is altogether fitting that this anthology is one of his last pieces of scholarship. Although it is precisely what it purports to be (a selection of readings skillfully tied together with Levenson’s own remarks), it is also a reflection erf Joe’s own working style. One erf his greatest gifts was his ability to read as much into a text as the author intended. Often, in fact, he saw implications of which even the original essayist was barely aware. These aperçus in turn, uniquely rewoven with other source materials, became integral parts of, and gready enhanced, such works as his trilogy Confucian China and Its Modern Fate. In this set erf readings we can join once again in the excitement erf his understanding and the joy of his mind. Thomas R. M etcalf Irwin Scheiner Frederic Waxeman Preface This anthology (like its companion volumes, Modern Japan: An Interpre tive Anthology, by Irwin Scheiner, and Modern India: An Interpretive Anthology, by Thomas R. Metcalf) has four parts. The first asks, How does one define China—how have the Chinese defined themselves—as a vessel of history in modem times? The next, What was the role of the past, and of Chinese feelings for the past, in establishing definitions? Third, What made the old order seem threatened, what made men feel the urgent need to threaten it? Lastly, What were the goals (and why were they goals) of the bearers of the threat? The selections that follow do not comprise a flowing narrative. They offer, instead, connecting links of in terpretations of the evidence of the senses.
The list of books you might like
